by K L Reinhart
“I know where the Hexan is going,” Terak said in a low and serious voice.
“What!?” Vorg spun around so fast that the wooden planks of the floor shook with the speed of his movement.
Terak took a breath and told Vorg what had happened in the Palace of Araxia. “I almost had him,” Terak said. Which, okay, is a bit of an exaggeration, Terak had to admit “I tracked him down in the Palace to where he was conspiring with Lord Yuliel of the Fourth Family of Elves.” That part was hard to admit and made Terak’s lip curl in remembered disgust. “The Hexan offered Yuliel safety from the Ungol in return for bringing down the walls.”
“And where did the Hexan go!?” Vorg took a step toward the elf. Terak saw Vorg cast a checking look from one side to the other, as if wondering to himself if there really was a way that he could get out of here and track down his oppressor.
“The Hexan wants to get something called the Sword of Damiel and he, they—” Terak paused at the memory of shuddering cold and terrible, terrible malevolence. “They spoke to an Ungol spirit, a powerful one, who made the bargain. She told him where to find the Blade.”
“The Queen,” Vorg glowered deeply, his chin and shoulders lowering a little in resignation. “I know of whom you speak, although, thankfully, I have never met her. I do not know what she was in her own realm, but the Hexan turned her into a god for the orcs . . .”
Terak nodded. That made sense. The Hexan was bartering and bargaining with Ungol creatures, offering them access to Midhara, and preparing their way by infecting the orcs with some half-baked theology.
But what is the purpose of all these cursed agreements? Just to get a sword? Power? When Terak voiced his concern, Vorg looked even more glum as he spoke.
“This is what I have been trying to tell my people. That the Hexan does not care for them or even for his twisted gods,” Vorg said. “I do not know what game that sorcerer is playing—but he is doing it with the destinies of my people!”
“Of all of our peoples,” Terak said, and when Vorg looked at him, a serious understanding passed between them.
Not that it affected their situation, Terak knew. Both orc and elf turned to see that several orcs had stepped forward from the ranks, sniffing at the air suspiciously. It was now or never. As soon as they realized this Old Clock Tower was mostly empty, Terak feared that all of his plans would crumble to naught.
“Well.” Vorg rolled his shoulders inside their black plate armor, and Terak heard the heavy bones inside his gigantic body crack. “I might as well prove to my kin just how foolish they are for following him.” Terak saw a light settle in the orc’s eyes. A slow, savage grin spread across the orc’s face. “I will show them what a real orc—a free orc—can do . . .”
19
The Lady of the North
Vorg’s first movement was to sidestep in front of the shattered window and throw his final heavy-bladed knife, in one swift, overhand movement.
Terak saw it flash down through the Araxian dusk, the sliver of the Second Moon catching it, making it glint for just a brief moment, before—
Thock! It embedded itself in the throat of one of the orcs that stood proud of the others—clearly some kind of captain or lieutenant. With a confused “Urk!” the orc fell forward, as dead as a doornail.
“Hrogh!” Immediately, the assembled rank and file of the orcs behind them convulsed like a wave of anger. Several orcs took steps forward before Vorg’s booming voice called out over the amassed orcish kind.
“KIN! Know me! Know me and fear!” Vorg bellowed, his voice so deep and loud that Terak could even hear the bell starting up a sympathetic vibration-murmur.
“I am Vorg! Vorg the Blooded! Vorg the Giant! Whom you call Unwanted!” The orc roared his defiance at all of them. Terak heard sneers and snarls of outrage from the orcs below as they realized who dared to challenge them. But would their hatred of one orc be enough?
“I was once proud of my kin! I was proud of the blood we spilled together! I ate the flesh of my brothers and sisters after they had fallen to carry their strength with me!” Vorg exhorted his kinfolk, raising his great battle-ax to wave in the air outside the window. Terak realized that he was actually thankful that this Vorg had parted ways with the Hexan. He would have made an impressive—perhaps even an unstoppable—foe had he remained as the Hexan’s war-leader.
“But do you know now what I see when I look down at you all!?” Vorg shouted at them. Terak could see that this had to be some kind of ritual for orcish kind, this admonishing and shouting. The orcs were reacting with their own slurs and shouts, but they were listening.
“I see WEAKNESS!” Vorg shouted. “I see pathetic, weak, SOFT orcs before me! Orcs who do not deserve the name of their kind!”
Now that’s a way to make friends, Terak thought, his tension rising as the crowd of the assembled orcs grew ever more agitated.
“You believe that you are strong? Fierce? That you deserve the booty of this human city!?” Vorg challenged them. He then let out a booming, scolding laugh that made Terak’s blood run cold with how cruel it sounded.
“Which of you sat around the circle when you planned this attack? Which of you stood to speak of the blood-grievances you had with the humans? Which of you swore on the skulls of your fathers and mothers, your brothers and sisters, to dine on human flesh tonight!?” Vorg called.
“You are no orcs!” the Unwanted accused them. “I do not see orcs before me—I see SHEEP!”
The crescendo of hatred from the orcish armies was growing louder with every insult that Vorg threw at them.
“The truth is that you follow. You scamper at the heels of the Hexan—the human Hexan—as if he were your mother!” Another cackle of laughter. “I do not see orcs below me—and I stand here, just another orc, to make you ASHAMED!” Vorg’s tone turned into one of pure hatred. “If any of you can kill me, you would have done it by now. But you cannot! Because the weak can never overcome the strong!” Vorg ended in what Terak thought sounded like a piece of orcish wisdom, like my Path of Pain . . .
Whatever pieces of orcish philosophy that Vorg was using apparently worked, however. The many assembled warbands below started to chant and stamp their feet once more, faster and faster.
“Hrogh! Hrogh! Hrogh!”
And then the war chants were interspersed with more shouts from some of the other orcish captains, pointing at some of the front ranks of the orcs.
This is it, Terak’s hand tightened around the broadsword as the selected orcs started to break from the ranks and run toward the Old Clock Tower.
“One,” Vorg nodded to the body of the orc that he had murdered, keeping his constant tally of his kinfolk that he had killed. He turned, lumbering toward the stairs as the first of the orcs leapt the railings toward the smashed-open door below.
How many are there? Terak thought. He saw what he thought had to be at least seven large and long-limbed orcs forming the first wave of attack, with another batch of orcs being assembled behind them by their captains and chiefs.
Terak hit the side of the bell with the flat of his broadsword. The resounding BWARRRM made the orc chiefs look up for a fraction of a second.
Below the elf, the first wave of the orcs had hit the Old Clock Tower. Terak heard Vorg’s bellowing voice echoing through the stairs and rooms:
“Come and die like all the others!”
“Three! Four!” Terak heard the unwanted Champion calling out his kills as the gigantic Vorg fought his kinfolk in the base of the Old Clock Tower below. Terak readied himself in case any of the orcs managed to climb the Old Clock Tower to dare and try to attack Vorg from above and behind.
“Grargh!”
“Hsss!”
“Five!”
The first wave of the orcs had forced themselves into the lowest room of the Old Clock Tower, but from the sound of Vorg’s counting, they had suffered heavy losses. Terak saw an orc body flying back out of the front door, its head riven from Vorg’s battle-ax.
The would-be Hexan Champion had fought off the first wave, only to find that another was leaping the railings and streaming across the small plaza to meet him, weapons drawn.
Vorg might think that his kin are pathetic, Terak thought, but that didn’t mean that their chiefs were stupid, he saw. They were only dispatching medium-sized bands of orcs at a time because any more would entail the orcs endangering each other with their wild attacks in such a small space.
And there were still easily a few hundred more ready for the fight . . . Terak hissed his frustration.
“Scrargh!” Suddenly, the top of the Old Clock Tower gave a resounding, scrabbling thump as something landed on its roof. Terak followed its skittering, scraping claws as it stumbled down the sides to the first broken-open window . . .
One of the wyverns! Terak saw the leathery shadow of the thing’s wings. Then the sudden emergence of the thing’s head and long neck as the creature attempted to force its way into the bell room.
Oh no, you don’t! Terak darted forward to swing his broadsword at the creature, but missed as the thing recoiled its serpentine head just in time. It snapped forward with its rows of foul-smelling teeth—
“Urk!” Terak dropped to one knee, rolled, and flung his sword upwards over his head in an arc that hit scales and earned a screech of outraged pain from the beast. He had hit the thing across its breast, breaking scales and spilling green blood—but the creature wasn’t dead. It swiveled its biting head around one more time, snapping again and again at Terak in the small space, forcing him around the far side of the bell.
“Sss—” Terak heard the hiss and the scrape of movement behind him a fraction of a second before the glowing crystal-glass of one of the remaining clock faces exploded inwards. Terak threw himself into a roll as a second wyvern grappled the tower and thrust its own snapping and champing jaws at him.
Ixcht! The elf swore as he scrabbled backwards, kicking with his feet at the two heads of the wyverns that threatened to tear him limb from limb.
“Get back!” Terak heard himself snarl before one of his booted kicks hit the side of the bronze bell with a heavy thump.
BWWARRM! The sound was almost deafening. Instantly, the wyvern heads recoiled from the shocking cacophony.
Oh! You don’t like that, huh? Terak used the brief window of opportunity to stumble to his feet and hit the bell with the flat of his blade again and again and again.
BWAAARM! BWARRM! BWWARRM!
The wyverns, hissing and recoiling, pulled themselves back out of the bell room. Terak saw one of them launch itself back into the dawn skies. The other merely clung onto the window, shaking its head from side to side.
The wyvern’s brightly-scaled chest was exposed, framed by the large window that its lower legs and the hooks on its wings clung to.
Terak jumped forward to drive his heavy broadsword deep into the thing’s chest. He used every ounce of muscle as he lunged, from his aching, arrow-struck calf to his back, shoulders, and arms.
It was enough to puncture the softer scales under the thing’s bird-like ribcage. The wyvern thrashed and shrieked its death rattle as it slid backwards off the broadsword, tumbling to the crowd of the orcish fighters below.
“Fourteen! Fifteen!” Vorg was still fighting down there, but it looked to Terak that he had lost the advantage of the front floor. When he peered down, all he could see was a sea of orc fighters as the captains and chiefs sent wave after wave to swamp the tower.
He must be the next floor down, Terak thought, cocking his head to listen to the noise as he scanned the skies to see at least two more darting, winged shapes of wyverns approaching the tower.
At least Vorg need only fight a few at a time on the stairs, Terak breathed, taking a breath as he readied himself for the next wave of wyverns.
But how long can we hold out against a few hundred? The elf thought grimly. He had never thought that his life as an Enclave Brother would end here, like this—
PHABOOOM!
And it was in that moment that a plume of orange fire lifted from the plaza below.
What was that!? Terak thought in alarm as, despite his better judgment, he raced to the edge of the clock face sill. Had the orcs decided to sort out the Vorg problem by setting fire to the Old Clock Tower? Even with their own loyal orc kind within it?
“Seventeen!” Vorg’s growls were getting closer, as he was being forced back up through the tower by the tides of his savage kinfolk.
Terak looked out to see that the plaza below, and Fisherman’s Lane outside, had been transformed in the last few heartbeats. There was now a rising pall of oily black smoke at one end of the lane, and at its heart was a dimly glowing, cherry-red fire. Terak smelled burning meat, and heard cries of dismay as the forms of orcs, still with flame wrapping their bodies, ran from the blast.
What!? For one wild moment, Terak wondered if the War Burg had decided to launch its burning, incendiary projectiles at them. But not even the orcs were that stupid, it appeared.
The elf’s eyes looked up to find the source of the attack, and they widened when he saw just who—or what—it was.
There, sweeping through the smokes that wreathed the city airs, and with the first rays of the new dawn catching her sails—was an air galleon. And from its purple-and-green flags, Terak realized that he even recognized it.
It was the Lady of the North, the air galleon of the young Lord Falan Brecha, Lord Commander of the Kingdom of Brecha, where the Enclave stood.
Bolts of burning blue-white fire speared down on the orcish armies from the flying air galleon above. They were matched by the tumbling pots that were thrown from her launchers onto the city below. Every time one of those pots hit any surface—whether stone roof or cobblestone or orc flesh—they exploded in a flash of green-and-ruddy fire before setting up a horrible, greasy smoke.
The air galleon had cannons, too. Terak knew that much from her previous fight against the Ixcht insect-men, but the galleon was not firing them at this time. Terak wondered if that was because the galleon was moving too fast, or that the cannons would kill too few.
Instead, the Lady of the North swept in a strafing arc toward the Old Clock Tower. Those Brechan forces which had some advanced degree of battle magic fired their spells down on the orc armies. All others threw the chemical incendiaries, which, to Terak’s eyes at least, reminded him of the alchemical workings of Father Jacques, his mentor.
“Hoi!” Terak leaned out to wave his sword at the air galleon as it swept past, billowing smoke clouds on either side of it. He had no idea if any scout or soldier aboard the galleon could even spot his small frame amidst all the chaos.
“Scrargh!” But it wasn’t as if the Lady of the North had dominated the battlefield. Terak saw darting shapes of the wyverns converging on her, and how the flaring blue-and-white bolts of battle magic instead turned their attention not to orcish armies below, but to these newer, much closer threats.
The armies of the orc warbands below, although they had been struck with fire and magic several times, were still vast in number. Terak saw in the early dawn light how they were spreading out, a few streets back into the city, and sending up bolts of their own answering curse-magic. The orcish curses looked like boiling green-tinged smoke as they shot upwards through the air to smack against the hull of the Lady of the North as she lifted in her arc.
Is she going? Terak thought. Maybe they realized that this place was more than a match for just one air galleon? The elf could hardly blame her as he saw that there were now more darting and shrieking clouds of the wyverns being dispatched from the distant War Burg. Enough to swamp the Lady, the elf thought.
Thump! There was a groan and a snarl as Vorg threw himself into the bell room, before kicking the heavy wooden trap door closed behind him and wedging his battle-ax between trap door and window. The Unwanted had lost his helmet, and now had several deep gashes of green ichor across his brow.
At his feet, the trapdoor jumped as orcish voices
clamored and beat at it. It won’t be long before they break that. Terak looked at the heavy planks of the trapdoor, starting to shake and crack.
“Twenty-six,” Vorg said exhaustedly. His giant hands drenched in green blood patted his belt and armor for any weapon left, but he had none. With a snarl, he flexed his black talons and hunkered into a fighter’s stance before the breaking trapdoor.
But there was a high, whistling sound cutting through the night. Terak recognized it as one of the horns that the Brechans used. And it was getting closer!
“Vorg, with me!” Terak moved to the window to see that the Lady of the North hadn’t left, but had instead turned to return a strafing arc of its chemical fire-pots, as other blasts of battle magic sought to fend off the wyverns. The Lady of the North was flying—and slowing!—as it approached the Old Clock Tower. Dangling from at least two places underneath its hull were long and heavy hemp rope ladders, flailing in the wind and gales.
“This is our chance!” Terak shouted. “Up on the roof!”
“What?” Vorg growled. “I’d rather die here with my claws around the neck of a coward—”
“Or you could find the Hexan with me!” Terak demanded, not waiting for Vorg’s answer. He swung himself out of the window to haul himself up with pained and aching limbs to the ridiculously small peaked roof above. The wind buffeted him, and the streamers of black smoke made his eyes water. But Terak could see the prow of the Lady of the North lifting, and the rush of wooden planks start to roar over his head.
“Ugh!” A grunt of pain and exasperation, as two immense gray claws appeared on the edge of the small roof. Vorg hauled himself to cling, somewhat desperately, to the small roof beside the elf Terak.
“This is insane!” Vorg growled. Below them they heard the crash of splintering wood, and the sudden arrival of hooting, snarling, bloodthirsty orc warriors.
Pheet! One of the orc’s ugly little black arrows flicked past Terak’s shoulder.
